Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, whose antic approach to classic dances continues at the Joyce through Saturday, provides more than a lot of laughs and the charge that comes from watching skilled ballerinas do their stuff.

With their exquisite timing, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo—the Trocks, to you—have bourréed into the Joyce. It was only weeks ago that the Kirov got out of town, and two of the ballets they were featuring—Swan Lake and Don Quixote—are also featured by the Trocks in performances that are looking less and less like outright parody. As the level of technical accomplishment among the Trock guys has skyrocketed, the idea of actually dancing Odette or Kitri has become more alluring. Yes, it’s fun to camp it up as a Russian ballerina with a funny name—Sveltlana Lofatkina, Elena Kumonova—or a danseur from hell like Igor Slowpokin. And at least one of the Trocks, Ida Nevasayneva, is still relying far too heavily on mugging: last season, in The Dying Swan; this year, swathed in yellow tulle and prancing around with a watering can, in Agnes de Mille’s 1928 Debut at the Opera. But though the Trocks stubbornly persist in their tedious tradition of repeated pratfalls and outlandish exaggerations, they’re also seriously stretching toward Swan Lake and Don Q. Indeed, their recent Paquita and La Vivandière are creeping up on being straight.

I have a recent program in hand. The front of it lists Pamela Pribisco as the ballet mistress. There's also someone named Tory Dobrin who's the artistic director. Is that male or female (nickname for Victoria)? The back of the program lists the company manager/associate technical director as Isabel Martinez Rivera, the development consultant/associate ballet mistress as Margaret Carlson, company archivist as Anne Dore Davids, website manager as Marianthe Bohlmeijer.

So, although there's no current female dancer, women are well represented within the Trock's sphere.

<B>Trocks in frocks are back</B> September 23 2002 By Jo Roberts The Age

After not visiting Australia for more than 20 years, the New York-based men in tutus, Les Ballets Trockaderos de Monte Carlo, are now set to visit our shores for the third time in 13 months.

The Trocks - men in tutus and pointe shoes who use their well-honed ballet skills to perform comedic yet loving ballet parodies - performed a sellout season at the Victorian Arts Centre in August 2001.

<B>Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo at the Civic Theatre</B> 11.10.2002 By BERNADETTE RAE The New Zealand Herald

The Trocks are certainly not beyond hamming it up, but what is truly funny is the sight of so many pairs of taut and grisly legs up en pointe, jette-ing and pas de chat-ing with the best of them, doing it perfectly but being somehow not quite right.

<B>Twelve men swan their way though classical ballet</B> John Daly-Peoples National Business Review, NZ 17-Oct-2002

This is not a comedy act trying to get laughs out every movement. These guys really know how to dance and are skilled in all the classical techniques. They even manage to perform on the pointes of their toes, which is supposed to be near impossible.

Their overly zealous approach to technique highlights the strange and sometimes outmoded practices of ballet. The dancers all sport broad smiles with bared teeth that look like gleaming mouthguards, pointing out the controlled happiness that infects so much classical ballet

Trockaderos still just as humorous as always BY BARBARA LEVERONE for The Herald Tribune (Sarasota)

SARASOTA -- It's been four years since Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo brought their special brand of humor to Sarasota, and, if the belly laughs and sustained giggles heard Wednesday night at the Van Wezel mean anything, the Trocks are still as funny as ever.

The ensemble hasn't changed much -- a dozen men, dressed as ballerinas, dancing en pointe -- and the program once again featured "Swan Lake," "The Dying Swan" and "Stars and Stripes Forever." Yet, the classic slapstick humor continues to tickle our funny bones, much as a favorite "Three Stooges" skit.

"Swan Lake, Act II" provided a scenario ripe for parody with a menacing villain, love-struck Prince Siegfried, the beautiful Odette, and a row of hopping swans. Everything that's not supposed to happen at the ballet did: The prince dipped a swooning Odette before tumbling her to the floor in a classic pratfall, and the corps kept their arabesque line at a respectable height, but swooped their arms in a vigorous dog-paddle.

... since their 1974 debut, the Trocks, as these boys on pointe are called, have grown from a hairy-chested joke to one of the most successful phenomena in dance. <a href=http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/5305907.htm target=_blank>more</a>

Seeing Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo would be a treat on any given night. Friday night, however, it was even more so. Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center was overflowing with unlucky New Yorkers who had not or could not escape the city during the country’s largest blackout in history. In fact, in order to see the show, many of the viewers had no doubt braved the packed city buses that were New Yorkers’ only hope of transportation for the two days following the blackout in order to see the show. The Trocks rewarded our trip, entertaining outside in the high humidity with a program filled with their standard pieces and their stock jokes and gags.

The longest piece, Les Sylphides came first and was the one that they packed with the most humor. There were the jumps that land too hard, gum chewing in the corps, movements that are too angular or too quick to be graceful, prima ballerinas who trip over corps members and who lose their placing on stage. Corps member fussed with their skirts and dancing ballerinas came out of a leap or a turn to find tulle in their face. Pavel Tord (Bernd Burgmaier) was the only danseur on stage. Dressed in a blonde wig and pale make up, he played his part as an emotionless, aloof, rather dumb leading man. Even though the corps members followed him lovingly with their eyes, his dim-witted nature frustrated his partners. He wandered away from the position he was supposed to be in; he did not anticipate his ballerinas’ moves and once got confused about which ballerina he was supposed to partner. One of his final moves was to rip his partner’s dress at the end of a final lift.

Judging from the laughter throughout the crowd, the audience loved Les Sylphides. Yet, I find that I like the Trocks best when they cut down the slapstick humor and play it straight…so to speak. Their “Pas de Trois des Odalisques” used three “female” stars, Lariska Dumbchenko (Raffaele Morra), Colette Adae (Jason Hadley), and Olga Supphozova (Robert Carter) to parody the queeny qualities that can be found in some ballerinas. These three dancers pushed each other out of the spotlight – literally by shoving and directing others off the stage and figuratively by trying to out-dance each other. Yet in this execution of difficult work done well, I think that the Trocks make some of their boldest statements.

It’s fun to watch them satirize the stereotypes of the ballet world. However, when these men begin executing skillful fouetté turns and arabesques, then I think they begin to tackle the deep stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that we face on a daily basis. When, for example, Sylphia Belchick (Carolos Garcia) in “Spring Waters” shows off her quick lightness and deep back arches, Fifi Barkova (Manolo Molina) displays a sultry femininity in “Don Quixote,” and Olga Supphozova dances with fluidity in “Stars & Stripes Forever,” the Trocks break our stereotypes of acceptable masculine behavior, a stereotype that I think is still more explosive than the reverse – when women show their masculine side.

These men are capable of holding down the leading lady’s role. They show us just how graceful men can be. Let’s face it, some men were born to be the prima ballerina.

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